


The good live again

by outlaw_queened



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-03
Updated: 2014-06-03
Packaged: 2018-02-03 07:30:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1736285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outlaw_queened/pseuds/outlaw_queened
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marian swallows down the whiskey like she’s had it a thousand times before. “No, I doubt you were. Still…” Her eyes study you and you don’t back down, don’t look away, and she shakes her head. “You’re like a new person here.”</p>
<p>“I try,” you say, suddenly uncomfortable under her gaze. She’s beautiful and she’s beloved by the ones you’d nearly had and she should hate you, but instead she’s watching you with new curiosity and you press your fingers into the lapel of your coat.</p>
<p>“You do,” she says, and downs the rest of the whiskey.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The good live again

He’s across the diner and he’s staring at you.

 

You hold your head high and pick at your croissant and you don’t look back at him. Tink is talking to you- something about fairy politics and you’d normally listen closely but you don’t hear a word. He’s sitting with his wife and his son and he’s staring at you.

 

_Is it true?_ he’d asked you that first night and you’d stared at the woman holding his son and remembered her, remembered dragging her from village to village until she’d finally met her end. _Were you going to execute her?_ He doesn’t say _kill_ and you’re grateful for that subtle distinction, for the way his eyes are still soft and swirling with pained indecision when he looks at you.

 

His eyes are so light, like glass in which you can see a world you’ll never touch again.

 

* * *

 

Roland runs to you and climbs onto your lap and Marian watches with distrust. You smile at him and you show him the symbols in the book you’re looking at and try to explain them. _It’s a weather spell. We’re going to try to find out why it’s so cold outside_. 

 

He’s wearing a coat over a sweater and he’s still shivering but he gives you a look like you don’t understand anything at all. “Elsa makes it cold,” he says. “Didn’t you see the movie?”

 

You hadn’t, not how it was marketed, but you’ve seen the posters all over town and Ruby plays that damned song on repeat in the diner. It’s playing right now, as a chill wafts through the diner door when Emma and Henry fumble their way inside, Henry bundled not nearly to your approval. “Elsa’s not real,” you try to explain. “She can’t exist within our world.” 

 

But he shakes his head and shivers once and you wonder.

 

* * *

 

Emma is always on her best behavior around you now until you both explode, time and time again, accusations and old resentments coming to the fore and not leaving either of you. Your words bite into her- _careless_   _interference, playing god, you would take away everyone I care about_ \- and she ranges from apologies to exasperated,  _You were going to kill his wife!_

 

And then you have no responses that can make that better and you just watch her, seething, and she whispers, “I know you need to be angry now. I know you have to be angry at me so you don’t have to be angry at her.”

 

_Yes_ , you don’t admit, but Emma’s always known you so well.

 

She flees your house and you stand, shivering, in the cold that escapes inside when she opens the door.

 

* * *

 

They all come over to watch Frozen, Emma and her parents and Robin and his family. You sit on the couch, stiff with hands tight on your crossed knees, and Marian sits on the next cushion. Robin is at her feet, and he doesn’t lean back against you but you can feel his eyes on you the whole movie.

 

Emma squeezes your shoulder as she walks past and you nearly crumple right then, if not for Marian sitting beside you, sneaking glances at you between scenes.

 

You watch the sisters onscreen, so distant and still drawn together, and you make an excuse and depart for the kitchen.

 

* * *

 

“She must have thought it an impossible task to come back from what she’d done,” a quiet voice says from behind you. 

 

You’re washing dishes, scrubbing them until you can see the filigree fading from their edges. “It doesn’t matter,” you say, and you’re proud of how your voice doesn’t waver. “She was evil. Now she’s dead. The good live again, my sister turns herself to dust. I deserve no less.”

 

“You deserve the future you’ve fought for,” Robin murmurs, and you lean on your forearms on the edge of the sink and refuse to turn around.

 

“I killed your wife.” In the quiet of the kitchen, it’s stark and simple and potent, and you have to bite down on your lip to keep it from trembling. “How can you talk about what I deserve?” 

 

“You didn’t execute her, just as you didn’t execute Emma Swan. That past is gone.” He says it with absolutely no certainty, as helplessly struggling to comprehend as you, and you wouldn’t be able to come back from this even if Marian hadn’t been rescued from your dungeons. 

 

* * *

 

You dream at night of being great and terrible and dangerous, of standing over dead townspeople and mocking screaming victims. You blink and you’re on the ground in a dungeon, crying out for mercy, and when you look up you see a woman wearing your face. 

 

You wake up panting, your double layer of blankets thrown off of you as the wind howls outside.

 

* * *

 

Marian is sitting on a park bench while Robin and Roland skip stones across the pond. It’s a family activity, so simple and happy that you feel like you’re overstepping even watching from the distance. Unfriendly dark eyes turn to spot you and her lip curls.

 

_I’m just as off-kilter as you are_ , you don’t say to her, but you catch her eye and the two of you lock gazes and maybe it’s all clear to her then because she nods slowly and presses her palms to her knees.

 

* * *

 

“I hear you’re meant to be his soulmate,” Marian says as she bends close to the forest floor, tracing the path of the ice that trickles through the trees. She’s your best tracker (visually, anyway, this cold has wreaked havoc with Ruby’s nose) and you and Emma are following in silence, uncomfortable beside each other. 

 

You shake your head and think about this woman you didn’t kill. “None of that matters. Did he tell you that?” You school your voice into something light and uncaring and Marian stares at you for a long moment.

 

“No.” Marian frowns at you. “It must be horrific for him to find that out and know what you’ve done.” 

 

“Hey!” Emma says, holding up a hand. “We’re not–“ 

 

But you don’t need Emma to protect you ever again. “It must,” you say coolly. “Since he’s only ever known me as the person I’ve become. No more shadows of the past.”

 

She snorts like it’s all a lie and you’re living inside an illusion. You don’t know if she’s right or not.

 

* * *

 

Sometimes you dream about being in that cell, about turning yourself to mud and clay and shattering into a thousand pieces. But every single time, when you look up, you see Rumplestiltskin watching, eyes mocking as you fall apart.

 

Every time you can’t shake the suspicion that he’s somehow involved.

 

* * *

 

Roland runs ahead of them to greet you when you’re exiting Town Hall. “I played ball today!” he announces and you lift him up to listen properly, to smile at this little boy who’d run through your castle for a year and you’d been so fond of him that you wouldn’t even send his father away.

 

You’d kissed for the first time in that castle, a dozen times where you’d gotten too close and he’d been too willing to support you. He’d been a fool, a white hat, all the things you’d hated, and you hadn’t been able to stay away.

 

You’d lashed out at him a dozen times and he’d still persisted in following you, in seeking you out, in giving back your anger and calmly mocking you in return. You’d felt fire with him that you’d thought you’d surrendered with Pan’s curse.

 

* * *

 

He still looks at you like you’re about to kiss him, like he’s stunned that you exist.

 

You know.

 

You do, too.

 

* * *

 

You and Robin and Emma and Marian are the ones tasked with finding whatever being is threatening this town. No one says Elsa anymore but you all think it, you all search for a telling flash of white and blue in the dark of the woods.

 

“What…what happened to Hook?” you murmur to Emma one day, while Robin and Marian move stiffly ahead of you. “Isn’t he supposed to be following you through town like the lapdog he is?”

 

She squeezes your hand like you’ve forgiven her and you let her, just this once. “I think he left. I don’t know. I’ve been focused on this.” She waves around like she means the snow that’s caking to the trees out here in the middle of summer, but her hands pause when they’re directed at you and she flushes and hurries to catch up with Robin and Marian.

 

You can’t think of a single day when Emma hasn’t been underfoot, claiming that she’s looking after Henry or that you need to practice some magic together for the safety of the town. You would have locked yourself in your house for a week if you hadn’t had to deal with her every day, and you’d seen her as yet another insensitive annoyance to cope with.

 

And yet. Here you are, weeks later, fully functional even if you’re afraid to look at Robin for too long.

 

“You watched me nearly execute you. Nearly kill your mother,” you say, catching up to her. “You’ve seen who I am now. Aren’t you tired of trying?” Robin and Marian pause ahead of you, both listening, and you squeeze your lips together and wait.

 

She rolls her eyes at you like you’re being unreasonable. “Come on, Regina,” she says, reaching out to touch your gloved hand with her own, and you blink little frozen crystals from the edges of your eyes.

 

* * *

 

“I don’t know how she looks at you and sees something else so easily,” Marian confesses when you’ve all split up. You won’t go with Robin and you’re paired up tracker to magic user, so it’s the two of you, dangerously close to the area where Zelena’s barn had been. The portal is closed, the house deserted, and you’re searching the room where you’d first seen Robin’s lion tattoo.

 

You inspect the same whiskey and Marian takes it from you and starts pouring it as though you’re not…who you are to each other. You don’t smile this time, but your heart beats just as quickly. “I doubt I was as cruel to her as I was to you,” you admit.

 

She swallows down the whiskey like she’s had it a thousand times before. “No, I doubt you were. Still…” Her eyes study you and you don’t back down, don’t look away, and she shakes her head. “You’re like a new person here.”

 

“I try,” you say, suddenly uncomfortable under her gaze. She’s beautiful and she’s beloved by the ones you’d nearly had and she should hate you, but instead she’s watching you with new curiosity and you press your fingers into the lapel of your coat.

 

“You do,” she says, and downs the rest of the whiskey.

 

* * *

 

You don’t go into the cellar. You don’t need to, not when you can feel the thrumming of magic below it from whatever Zelena had been doing before you’d fought. You don’t want to know, don’t want to think of her anymore than you already do.

 

“Who was he?” Marian asks from behind you when you kneel at the door, eyes closed as you seek out the final vestiges of her presence. “The one you lost.”

 

“She,” you correct, and why you lean forward salty droplets fall from your face to the cellar door. “I…the day you returned, I lost my sister.”

 

A gentle hand is laid on your shoulder and you look up, startled at the kindness in her eyes.

 

* * *

 

You watch them from inside the diner as they walk together past the window, a happy family reunited. You watch the way Roland stands between them and Robin’s smiles- once so easy- are tense and forced. You watch the way Marian looks helpless and lost and think of whiskey glasses and eyes that begin to see you. 

 

You watch Robin’s eyes shift to watch you through the window and you turn back to Henry, feeling oddly sad for them all.

 

* * *

 

“Are you happy?” you ask him when you’re next searching the woods, Emma a few steps ahead of you and wisely silent.

 

He shakes his head. “Does it matter anymore?” 

 

Yes. 

 

Yes, it does.

 

* * *

 

You hadn't loved him before and it’s ridiculous to think you might be developing these feelings now that you’ve kept yourself so distant, now that you’ve done everything in your power not to let him affect you anymore. 

 

You hate this silent yearning, this knowledge that nothing you do will ever make up for the past. That you can try and try and try and still be so alone, with only your son around to support you. That you need support from what was just a whirlwind romance brought to a sudden halt.

 

You watch him with Roland, the gentleness in his eyes when he regards his wife. You watch the way he watches you, as though you’ve been taken from him and he doesn’t know how to take you back.

 

He still looks at you like you’re sitting by the fire and talking about your pasts together, and you can’t bear to think that this is how you end, fading away as though you’d never been anything at all.

 

* * *

 

He’d held your heart in his hands and he’d kissed you as he'd pushed it back inside you, and you’d wept tears of joy at the way it pulses within you at his touch. You’d kept your eyes open when he’d kissed you, afraid to let a moment of it slip away, and you’d never truly believed that you could keep him.

 

Except maybe a secret part of you had.

 

* * *

 

But Marian is kind and Marian doesn’t hate you as she should, not anymore. You walk with one hand each tucked into Roland’s and she says, “Robin told me that your sister killed herself.”

 

“She was evil. Like I was.” Of all the people here, Marian should understand that, at least.

 

But she smiles tentatively and says, “Look at you now,” and then you’re crying again, gasping out breaths that puff out smoke and Marian’s hand is sliding into yours, squeezing it lightly as she studies your face and you want her to _know,_ to know who you are and what she should see when she sees you.

 

“I wanted your family. Did you know that? Did you know that I was going to love them?” you demand, dropping both her hand and Roland’s.

 

Marian takes a step back and you surge onward. “He was my _soulmate_ and now you’ve disrupted everything. And I have nothing. Look at me now and what am I? What are either of us? Empty husks, shadows of the past.”

 

She studies you for a moment, her face dark but not nearly as closed off as it had once been. “A second chance,” she says like Robin had to you when you’d kissed and it’s no wonder these two had been in love, no wonder they still belong together. “That’s what we are now, Regina, don’t you see? We don’t have to live in the past anymore.” 

 

You back away and run.

 

* * *

 

Emma insists that you all go back to the cellar and inspect it properly. “You don’t have to come along,” she says, but her reassurances always sound like challenges to you.

 

“I can handle my dead sister’s lair,” you say, and she holds your hand tightly like Marian had before. Like her mother even before that. And there’s so little anger left to hold onto these days when her fingers are soft against your skin and you’re so tired of hating the people you care about. 

 

“Okay,” she says. “Okay.”

 

* * *

 

Marian opens the cellar door and you can see from the way that Emma’s eyes widen that she’s remembered something much too late. “There was an urn,” she says, and something white lances out at Marian from below.

 

* * *

 

You see the scared girl with her hands outstretched toward Marian but you don’t think about her.

 

You don’t think about much of anything, except Roland and Robin holding onto Marian like they’re complete again, like they’ve gotten their true second chance. Like they’ve gotten the one they’ve always deserved. You think about kind eyes and _We don’t have to live in the past anymore_ and hurting, hurting, for yourself and for her and for everyone.

 

You’re dreaming and you’re in the dirt again, dressed in rags in a dungeon, and the woman sneering down at you has your face and there’s only one way to make it go away.

 

* * *

 

You fling yourself in the path of the ice and it strikes you directly in the heart, with so much force that you can feel the freezing cold as it spreads from your heart to the rest of your body. You who were once fire are now ice, nothing but coldness and the satisfaction that they’ll all be happy. That they have each other.

 

* * *

 

_Regina!_

 

The voices sound so distant, and you would close your eyes if you were anything else right now. 

 

_Regina!_

 

* * *

 

And then…warmth, seeping through you from your fingers and toes and hair and creeping back to your heart. There are hands on you, and your eyes clear up and you can see Robin cradling your face in his hands, weeping like you’ve never seen him before. There’s Emma behind him, eyes frantic and wondering, and Marian on the ground below you.

 

“An act of true love,” she whispers, shaking her head. “Like in the story.”

 

_For you_ , you don't say.  _For all of you._

 

And now Robin is holding you like he’ll never let go and you can’t push him away this time, and he’s murmuring things he _can’t_ and Marian is still watching with a quiet sort of resignation and Emma is blinking furiously and you’re so warm, so much warmer than you can possibly be in this endless winter.

 

The little girl is watching you all from the bottom of the stairs of the cellar and you see how lost she is, like another little girl weeping in the stables. Like a woman returned from the dead to a place she doesn’t belong. “Elsa,” you say, and you move from Robin’s arms to crouch beside Marian, for both of you to reach out to the girl in your sister’s cellar. “It’s time for summer.” 


End file.
